
Qass. 
Book. 



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ORATION: 



DELIVERED BY 



HON. RICHARD VAUX, 



GIRARD COLLEGE, 



FOURTH OF JULY, 1861. 



Mclaughlin brothku8, book and job PRiNTERg, 112 .south third street. 



7 






ORATION 



DELIVERED BY 



HON. RICHARD VAUX, 



GIRARD COLLEGE, 



FOURTH OF JULY, 1861. 



|1hUabclplna: 

McLATTGHUN ni^OTTTETtS, BOOK A\D JOB PBINTERS. 112 SOFTII TUTKD STREET. 



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Postscript. — When the author prepared these pages for obscurity, it was supposed, 
they being still-born, the obsequies would have been attended without form. The partiality 
of friends has prolonged their existence in type, it may be, nine days, a civic decade. 
For such an immortality one is more than compensated. The author feels so. 



Senree ukfeAim 



AN ORATION. 



[Those of my ColU'iigues in the Board of Directors, wlio cominise the Committee of Arrangements for 
the celebration of this day, have invited luo to take part in the proceedings. The invitation was 
most uiicxiicctcd. Cordially communicated, it was accepted as a duty. 

The remarks about to be oft'ereil. are intended to be in liarmony with this occasion. They refer 
to the Integrity of American Politics, llnw justly, you must judge.] 



History is the topography of the past. As the eye 
sweeps retrospectively the vastness between the present, and 
the horizon marked by the hne of Time's record, it snrveys 
those natural phenomena which the surface presents. They 
are produced by forces and influences to which science has 
given both a nomenclature and a name. Their existence is 
known, for they are presented as realities. Their causality 
combines the philosophy and the fact of their creation. 

Thus the mountain, valley, hill, plain, prairie, desert ; the 
gold, iron, coal ; the rivers, lakes and ocean, are develop- 
ments with which nature has varied the face of the earth. 
They attract notice and invite to consideration and study. 
Their creation, co-relations and elementary aptitudes are 
congregate tributes to man's destiny. 

From whatever point 'ftf'X^icW they are regarded, prin- 
ciples are either evolved or involved, directly or collaterally 
connected with their character and locality. 

In looking back to the confines from which tradition and 
letters take the burden of retaining and transmitting the 
surface developments of human progress, from the dawning 
uf Congregationalism in its rudest nomadic state, to the pre- 
sent condition of civilization : the mind is arrested in its 
travel over the panorama by the most startling objects of 
interest and wonder. The earth's population, the germ of 
government, the segregation of tribes, the polity of nomads, 
coramunital organism, the foundation of nationalities, the 
rise of empires, the fall of dynasties, the power of the 
sword, the controlling influence of crowns, the failure of 



liienircliics, the uprising of iiitelligeiicej tlie wonders of 
Bethleliem and Calvary, the earthquakes which destroyed 
formulas, the invasions, revolutions, wars, victories and con- 
quests ; the power of the pen, the independence and courage 
of enlightened minds, the camp at Runnymede, the Com- 
monwealth, the Colonies and our Constitution ; stand out 
from their surroundings and rivet the gaze of the observer. 

From whatever standpoint we make the survey, these 
facts and the philosophy of their existence become the most 
striking of all the phenomena. 

They have had an existence, or exist. The causes wliich 
produced them are part of themselves, either subjective or 
objective, anterior or contemporaneous. Like mountains 
rising from the sea, yet it is demonstrated that they have 
foundations. 

While making an examination of the patent, palpable 
exhibitions of the face of nature, we are followed by a train 
of sciences, which give explanations of the causes in rela- 
tion to their effects, and interpret what else would be mys- 
teries. Thus it is in our retrospect to other times. We are 
accompanied by guides which lead us to the ascertainment 
of the latent or hidden principles and powers, which have 
created or accomplished the majestic outcrops which surround 
our pathway. 

The occasion which assembles us to-day, and the incidents 
which belong to it, as well as the condition of our country, 
justify a more minute investigation of the past, proximate 
and relative to our own epoch. Let us invite the aid, in 
this appropriate occupation, of narration, deduction, and 
analysis. Our survey begins at that degree of longitude 
which runs through Jamestown and Plymouth. It is the 
same line which is studded by the initial names of Raleigh, 
Gosnold, Weymouth, and Winthrop. Chronology points 
with her index finger to A. D. 1600 — 1650. 



The social and political organism of Europe had been 
radically revolutionised. From Magna Charta to the first 
James, the sword and the pen held tournaments and had 
tilts. The night of ignorance was worsted by Sir Knight 
of Letters. Liberty of thought begat liberty of action. 
The mind enlightened, enfranchised faith and politics. The 
latent fire which began to burn in the depths of European 
political systems, made volcanic eruptions at Strasburg, 
Wittenburg, and Naseby. Thus was the surface changed. 
This new element was in agitation, arousing dynastic 
lethargy. The contest was unequal. The castles of feudal 
accumulation were plethoric with purposes and powers. 
Liberty had but one hope. The darkness which enveloped 
it was penetrated by the rays of the western sun. Its 
warmth and glowing brightness invigorated the longings for 
freedom. The western world was to become the witness of 
another exodus from captivity. 

The first European colonists in northern America were 
pilgrims. Their shrine was free government, both of 
thought and will. They went, to demonstrate the feasibility 
of coming. Those who followed were exile-victims of power 
without responsibility. Let us speculate as we may on the 
causes which peopled the discoveries of Columbus on this 
continent, the undeveloped, unascertained, unknown truth 
which came with them was popular sovereignty. They, 
like the Athenians, worshipped an unknown God ; they 
found it at last to be the right of self-government. 

Oppression had produced the spirit of resistance. At 
home, resistance was vain ; this feeling gained strength by 
suppression of its forces. Resistance to the demonstration 
of power drove away the oppressed, leaving the oppressor 
established. They sought in a new home, in a new world, 
what was denied in the old — freedom from a power un- 
created but by their own will or voice ; a government with- 



6 

out the abuses of power, circumscribed to the duty of pro- 
tection. Their religion was Christianity. The dispensation 
from the Mount of Olives had abrogated that of Sinai. 
Religious freedom was the twin-sister of political liberty. 
The power of the State was tyranny ; the power of the 
Church, bigotry. Allegiance thus severed from both made 
the soul and the man free. 

Great ends are not rapidlj^ reached. The encrustations 
of time on the surface are not easily destroyed. The colo- 
nists on the bays of Chesapeake and Massachusetts and 
Delaware, found themselves the subjects of corporate power. 
This was the crant of re^al will. 

Liberty was the franchise, but not freedom. They were 
governed by laws and law-makers not indigenous. Between 
the governed and the governors there was neither harmony 
of principles, identity of opinions, nor unity of interests. 
Their chartered prerogatives were to live, labor, report 
grievances, pay taxes and grow. The surface development 
was colonial life in a land of savages. Exigencies and perils 
were their penates. Home had its charms, with its oppres- 
sions. The home government was still bound to them by 
ties. The system was experimental. The colonists were 
self-dependent for all things but political existence. They 
had no amusements but to think. The anomaly became 
apparent ; they were self-sustaining, yet not self-governing. 
The soil yielded them food, the country enemies, the earth 
graves ; but the right to make their own laws had not yet 
been secured. The unknown God was unveilinGr itself. 
The soul was free, the mind at liberty, the man had fled 
from tyranny, yet the colonist was a subject. Then, for the 
first time on earth, the star of the new covenant was seen 
by these shepherds of growing ideas. It stood still over the 
birth-place of popular sovereignty. This child, in its youth, 
broke charters, enfranchised the exiles, man — made the 



colonists. The subject was, by this dispensation, trans- 
formed into the citizen. 

This was the first revolution in Amei'ica. Republican 
government, in form and spirit, had its foundations thus 
laid. The enlarged theology of the Gospel taught a pure 
political system. Independence and equality were the 
deductions from the Christian dispensation. Self-agency 
and the universal application of the redemption power 
awoke religious reformations. Political reforms came from 
this spirit of resistance to monopoly of rights. Free govern- 
ment was the first born of these political and religious 
didactics of the colonists. 

Thus, without concert or cognizance, Virginia saluted 
Massachusetts, in the victory of the new over the old 
ideas. 

These colonies were isolated in locality. Among them 
was no concomitance, self-existing, self-governing, self- 
defending, an unseen inHuence connected them. Tlie same 
sufferings, the same aims, the same ideas, the same language 
in which they prayed to the same God for safety, success, 
liberty and salvation. 

The surface of this new earth was changing. It seemed 
that trials, difficulties, dangers and defeat were departing 
w^ith the Dryads. Navigation furrowed its track on the 
ocean in the wake of emigration. Commerce and trade 
united unknown waters. It was transatlantic and territorial. 
Small settlements became provinces — provinces grew to 
States. The exile was a citizen of an inchoate nation. 
The eye of the oppressor looked out to the setting sun. Its 
rays gilded the symbols of western power. A crown was 
not visible. The cross stood majestic, guarded by a single 
star. It was the emblem of this new Bethlehem. 

The oppressor smiled. A new kingdom was found for 
conquest. 



The Crown was past ideas — absolutism. The Star w^as 
new ideas, or liberty and independence. We may call the 
war of the second revolution in America by any name, a 
contest for a conquest, or a struggle for subjugation, or a 
conflict for colonial allegiance — it may have either or all, 
but the outgrowth of ideas, the outcropping of colonial ex- 
perience, had changed the surface bearings in.^he new world. 
This revolution was the first fight betweenCtikan's right to 
govern himself and the right of others to govern him. The 
standards in the battle bore the principles of the combatants. 
The Crown and King and Parliament sought to make the 
laws for the colonies. The people demanded to make their 
own, and administer them. When Washington drew his 
sword at Cambridge, and the first cannon boomed its salute 
to the continental commander-in-chief, popular sovereignty 
became a system of government for man. 

The colonists sought protection in combination. Con- 
federacy was consistent with liberty 'and independence. 
Independence was then the idiosyncracy of America. Ex- 
perience and experiment had solved the problem of self- 
government. Their possessions were political and religious 
freedom. To defend both was a dut}^ to humanity. 

A colonial confederacy existed. A republic amazed the 
nations. Liberty and independence and self-sovereignty lit 
up the western world. The bow^ of promise to mankind 
described a hemisphere. 

Free thought had a continent for its refuge. 

This retrospect is an essential necessity. It traces the 
cause-growth of our country. 

Separate communities, their actual and political isolation, 
the foundation of confederation were consequences rather 
than causes. The attachment to separate independence was 
first incident to geographical position. Time made it a 
political fact. It was co-existent with first settlement. It 



was the normal condition of exotic colonies. Yielding to 
combination, segregation was affirmed. 

The first political principles of anti and post revolutionary 
existence, were separate independence and confederative 
unity. Marvellous in its conceptions, miraculous in its 
consequences. Divinity never spoke more plainly to man. 
Confederation was an idea of unity, perfect for its purpose. 
Individuality in combination without loss of identity. The 
whole life of tlie exile and the colonist taught him the value 
of self-reliance. The political life of each had circumscribed 
his longings for the right to govern himself. What perils 
had this cost him. What vigils, privations, conflicts, what 
moral courage, what faith ? The spirit of absolutism wns 
uneasy. It began the contest for its perpetuity. Its power 
was threatened, peradventure its existence. The new faith 
of the new world was portentous. The cloud in the west 
was but the size of a man's hand. The hereditary right of 
the few to regulate the many was attacked. In tlie 
banqueting hall of irresponsible government an apparition 
had been seen. She was of a known race. Her appearance 
was singularly original. Perpetual youth was stamped upon 
her face and form. Her beauty entranced, her figure 
attracted the beholders. 

The unbidden guest affrighted the revellers. None knew 
her. She was representative government. Slowly and 
gracefully she advanced, and with a linger dipped in liglit 
she wrote on the wall of the palace of potentates : 
" Absolutism, thou shalt die." The chirography was in an 
unknown language. Its interpretation was made by the 
genius of American politics. 

The colonies prepared for the coming struggle. The 
necessities of their condition required union of efforts. 
Separate resistance was impossible. United resources alone 
could be successful. The difficult question then to determine 



10 

was, union without centralization. Otherwise was impos- 
sible. Each colony w^as created by individual or separate 
efltbrts of the exiles. A common aim made them exiles, 
but not a common country either invited or received them. 
Their earl}^ condition was under corporate rule. Corpora- 
tions were combinations against which they had revolted. 
Their first successes were produced by separation. They 
had achieved an existence by uncombined power : their 
security was in themselves; they were to govern them- 
selves. Without the war about to be waged against them, 
there never would have been a Federal Union. This Union 
was the consequence of the crime of attempting to coerce 
the colonies. 

The conflict commenced. The issues involved had aug- 
mented from the cause to the crisis. Submission, sarrender, 
defeat, were the antagonisms of victory, liberty, union. 
The struggle of the revolution was faith against force. The 
new dogma of new politics in the new world. The past 
had no such inspiration. It was a Deism. This new doc- 
trine pervaded people. States and confederation. Rejected 
by old ideas as a fable — denied by believers in divine right, 
accepted by the colonists as a faith, a fruition and a f\xct. 
This new dispensation was to be baptized in blood. This 
was essential to success. If it was in earnest it must prove 
it; if it had vitality it must demonstrate it; if it was a 
faith it must be tested by fire. Martyrdom is the seal of 
sincerity ; beyond that is divinity. 

The difficulties disappeared ; objections yielded to ends. 
The confederacy was formed. It was separation in con- 
junction ; sui generis yet saga-born. 

The Congress of the confederation met. The popular 
sovereignty of the colonies and the colonists was there 
represented. It acted b.y the will of the people. It thus 
had its origin, else it would have been a league or compact 



11 

between States without constituents. The colonists were 
the constituency; the States were only a form of the ex- 
pression of this idea. If this Congress was not a represen- 
tation of the people, it carried out their determined purpose ; 
that Avas revolution against power, created but by them- 
selves — government without the consent of the governed. 
By whatever term or name it may be called, the sovereigns 
in the colonies were in Congress. The public will, general 
voice, and indestructible purpose of the colonists were there 
convened. Our survey now denotes the secondary formation, 
cropping out on the surface of nationality. 

Let us be more minute. The present, with its errors, 
demands a looking after the truth. That is the inner life 
of facts. This inner life, then, of confederative combination 
of the colonies in Congress represented, was a fact or a fable. 
This Congress had a purpose. That purpose was to be 
accomplished. Means were necessary. The controlling 
spirit was success. Success was victory. Victory was the 
independence of the confederates. This independence was 
the synonyme for self-government, political and religious 
freedom, and a national sovereignty to attest the whole. 
This was the very integrity of the revolution. It was the 
cause of tlie colonies. They devoted life, fortune and sacred 
honor to these ends. 

A defeat was to them but another word for political death. 
They would enter into that dark future over the portals of 
which would have been engraved a crown and this motto : 
" On entering here Jeave hope behind T Such a crisis, such a 
conflict absorbed every actual, reserved or expected power. 
The political and geographical sovereignty of the colonies 
was vested in this Congress. It was the mind of the rude 
machinery of revolution. It made war, made peace; it 
made money ; it raised armies, it made a navy, it exercised 
sovereignty, it was an inchoate nation. Let the world see it. 



12 

Remember, this was the confederate Congress ; this, the 
colonies in combination ; this, popular sovereignty in its 
boyhood ; this was nationality undergoing the first test ; 
this, the birth of the inner life of Union. We look in vain 
over and below this surface outgrowth for a reserved right 
by any colony in Congress, to do for itself, what they were 
doing collectively. It accomplished ever, only in conjunc- 
tion, not otherwise. Nowhere is any evidence of any other 
idea to be found. There could be none. Circumstances, 
necessity, events, the irresistible exigencies of the crisis, the 
cause and success, were each and all witnesses against such 
a right, either latent or patent. Popular sovereignty had 
no such subdivision. It was then seeking universality of 
demonstration. It was extending from a colony over a con- 
tinent. The inner life of confederation never contained the 
seed of secession. The confederation was a growino; idea: 
its roots were the colonies, the soil of liberty its home. A 
nation, an empire came out upon the tide of time. In the 
clear blue sky of the firmament it asserted its God-given 
right to be a State and have a name. Its standard floated 
before the world inscribed with these cabalistic signs : 

FOURTH OF JULY, 177G. 

Let us celebrate this successor of that day in the spirit 
wdiich made it immortal. 

Philadelphia was one of the churches of the Christian 
dispensation, so Philadelphia was the cathedral church of 
the new political dispensation of America. Many a pilgrim 
has come here to renew his vows, and rekindle his ahnost 
expiring faith. Many were born under this blessing. What 
an inheritance for the exile's posterity. Popular sovereignty 
was a triumphant, accredited and acknowledged element in 
government. 

It became the basis of a system. To-day we do homage 



at its shrine. Never was a temple dedicated to so coinpre- 
liensive and beneficent an idea. It was like that of Janns. 
It had two spirits in one, religious and political liberty. It 
became Christian by adding a third ; self-government made 
the Trinity. The war of the second revolution ended. 

The confederative Congress made peace for America, for 
all America, for all the colonial States. It asserted a 
sovereignty co-extensive with the power of the integral ele- 
ments in combat. No subdivisions of this sovereignty 
claimed to exist independently. The flag which you have 
raised and saluted to-day as the emblem of our nationality, 
represents the idea which the peace made triumphant. It 
is the flag of the United States of America — a more perfect 
Union than the confederacy. The confederacy had no future. 
The Union, was perpetuity, or a failure. 

Separate sovereign States — a federal unity ; organic laws 
of each in harmony and subjection to the Constitution. 
Powers circumscribed, defined, equilibrate. Constitutional 
government of constitutional governments. This was the 
Union, is the Union, must ever be the Union. The sove- 
reignty, acknowledged by the crown which claimed the colo- 
nies, to be in the confederation, was never parcelled out 
under or by the Constitution. It was transferred, not ter- 
ritorialized. It was compacted, not disjointed. It was 
augmented, not enervated. The Federal Union was con- 
federation perfected. The confederacy was the outgrowth 
of necessity. Its powers were implied. The Federal Union 
was the fact which the confederacy established. It was the 
inner life of the revolution. It developed a nation, sove- 
reign, supreme, and steadfast. Not centralized power, not 
supreme sole power. Sovereignty granted, not seized. Its 
powers, rights, duties were defined. It represented every 
element of the sovereignty of the people necessary to be a 
government. It spoke a voice unmistakable — "iwe the 



14 

people!' It was popular sovereignty nationalized. We have 
sainted its symbol to-day. There it floats ; let it ever be a 
sign to mankind, a symbol to the world. In future ages, 
everywhere, let that flag and this day be associated, the 
living embodiment of that ijopular sovereignty which is but 
self-government. As they rise high up out of the ocean of 
time, let their foundation be eternal. Let the rock of the 
faith of this new dispensation ftill, and crush absolutism, 
irresponsible government, nullification, secession, and 
treason. 

We are now re-baptizing the faith of the colonists. Let 
us to-day aid in the ceremonial. Let us proclaim an inter- 
pretation of the Constitution in harmony with its inner life. 
The rights of the people in the States in the Union, before 
the rights of the States anywhere. The sovereignty of the 
citizen secured the sovereignty of the United States. The 
United States and the Fourth of July, 1776; they co-exist. 

While the Union is preserved, liberty is secured. When 
the Union expires the faith of the colonists dies. 

Where, when shall mankind find another political 
calvary. 

Another thought. It seems this subject suggests it. 
Three quarters of a century have nearly solidified the 
organic law of the Union. To adjust all its principles and 
provisions requires time. There are modes appointed by 
which this is effected. 

In a great charter, like the Constitution of the United 
States, there are implied and express powers, reserved and 
granted rights. These involve questions for interpretation. 
But one jurisdiction exists for this duty. The sovereign 
people. They made it, they live under it, defend it, preserve 
it. When its very hidden life is to be developed, they alone 
can bring it forth. The interpretation of the Constitution 
is the exclusive duty of sovereign power. The people and 



15 

their organism of government are co-equals. As the one 
was created by the other, none else can explain it, if altera- 
tions are involv(Mi. This organism has had more than one 
interpretation by the people. 

It could not be otherwise tlian a necessity might arise for 
this judicial action of the sovereignty of the citizen. 

Coming as the Constitution did after the confederation, 
and the confederation from the colonies, the forces of cen- 
trifugal and centripetal action were not destroyed. To 
harmonize their eftects was imperative. The one tended to 
a consolidated government of the Union. The other to in- 
dependent government of the State. The early teachings 
of colonial condition cultivated State rights. It first 
attacked the Constitution at Connecticut. The Puritans 
had a love for Cromwell. It again assailed the Union at 
South Carolina. The Huguenots had a hatred for power 
not their own. The people in both instances interpreted 
the Constitution to be the supreme law. 

Another error appeared in the assumed powers of Con- 
gress. A right was claimed by Congress to create a 
monopoly — a Ijank — a national institution in name, without 
responsibility to the constituents of Congress. The people 
interpreted the Constitution to grant no such power. 

To-day secession is claimed to be the inherent right of the 
States. This last attack is directed against the Constitution, 
Union and Liberty. The people are preparing to settle tliis 
fpiestion forever. They are about to interpret the Consti- 
tution. This time it will be done with the ceremonial of 
battle, blood, victory, and retributive justice on treason. 
The faith of the colonists was baptized in the blood of the 
second revolution. The faith of the people will seal with 
blood their devotion to the integrity of American politics. 

The sovereignty of the people will be vindicated, and the 
rights of the States secured. The Constitution will be pre- 



IG 

served, and this will be accomplished by the people, in- 
terpreting what is a constitutional government of con- 
stitutional governments. Remeniber in this, that the letter 
killeth. but the spirit keepeth alive. 



w 



